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Clinton Will Advise Schools on Uniforms

In the name of putting "discipline and learning back in our schools" President Clinton instructed the Federal Education Department today to distribute manuals to the nation's 16,000 school districts advising them how they can legally enforce a school uniform policy.

"If it means that teen-agers will stop killing each other over designer jackets," the President said in his weekly radio address, "then our public schools should be able to require their students to require school uniforms." He repeated the theme in a series of appearances throughout the day, expanding on an idea he mentioned in passing in his State of the Union message.

If it means that the schoolrooms will be more orderly, more disciplined," Mr. Clinton said, "and that our young people will learn to evaluate themselves by what they are on the inside instead of what they're wearing on the outside, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms."

By supporting measures like the school-uniform option, Mr. Clinton is trying to use the President's bully pulpit in this election year to articulate a moderate Democratic agenda that steps into the area of social issues that have long been the province of Republicans.

Mr. Clinton has put particular emphasis on issues affecting children and families in an effort to engage voters who see Washington's political debates as arcane and cut off from their own concerns. Such exhortations allow him to exert leadership without inaugurating new spending programs. And they borrow from the ideas of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has long put an emphasis on children, which Mr. Clinton acknowledged today in a rally outside the Jackie Robinson Academy, a Long Beach public school where students wear uniforms.

"For ten years, several times a year, before Long Beach finally took this groundbreaking step, the only person who ever talked to me about school uniforms was the First Lady," Mr. Clinton told a crowd of several thousand gathered on a brilliant sunny day.

After visiting a school, he said, Mrs. Clinton "would say, 'You know, if we had a uniform policy, it would make things better in this school.' I heard it over and over and over again," he recalled, "and, thanks to you, I have to live with 'I told you so.' "

Mr. Clinton added wryly, "Being able to endure 'I told you so' is one of the essential requirements of a successful marriage."

Mr. Clinton selected the Jackie Robinson Academy as the place to showcase his support of uniforms because in 1994, Long Beach made uniforms mandatory for all 58,500 students in its elementary and middle schools.

In the following year, school officials found that school crime had decreased by 36 percent. Students at the academy wear blue or white polo shirts, blue pants or plaid skirts.

"It's tragic when young people without a balanced upbringing, without grounded values, without a secure education, wind up believing that it's all right to kill somebody for a pair of sneakers or jewelry or a designer jacket," Mr. Clinton said, citing recent incidents of violence by teen-agers.

The President dismissed critics who say that school uniforms hinder free expression. "I think these uniforms do not stamp out individuality among our young people," he said at the rally.

"Instead, they slowly teach our young people one of life's most important lessons: that what really counts is what you are and what you become on the inside, rather than what you are wearing on the outside."

He made the same point when he called a small meeting with 13 civic leaders and students to hear their views, one of his trademark discussion sessions. "There are still differences in people," Mr. Clinton prompted.

A girl agreed, saying, "It's not a clone thing."

When Mr. Clinton first mentioned school uniforms in his State of the Union address, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who has since dropped out of the Republican Presidential race, accused the President of a tendency toward intrusive government.

The President went out of his way today to stress that the uniform policy was voluntary and up to individual school districts to impose -- not the Federal Government.

The manual on school uniforms prepared by the Education Department is only six pages long and modeled on a previous set of guidelines Mr. Clinton ordered last summer to explain the wide degree of religious expression allowed in schools under current law. The manual notes that a uniform policy must accommodate students who wear yarmulkes or head scarves as a religious practice.

It also says the policy may not prohibit students from wearing "expressive items" like political buttons.

The guidelines say the potential benefits of school uniforms include decreasing violence, keeping gang colors and insignias out of schools, instilling discipline, fostering more concentration on studies and helping officials recognize school intruders.

Mr. CLinton's speech here came midway through a two-day tour through California and Washington, two states considered crucial to his re-election.

The trip marked Mr. Clinton's 22d visit as President to California. He plans to return on March 9.